Funeral Rain Press Corps

Genre: Progressive Black Metal
Label: Southern Lord

Pushing black metal into further left field regions, while keeping it firmly rooted in it’s origins can’t be an easy feat. But Wolves in the Throne Room seem to do it just fine, perhaps even making it an easy feat after three albums and two demos before Celestial Lineage.
Musically, this album is beyond what many people would call black metal. WITTR are taking cues, it seems, from Isis (whose own Aaron Turner makes chanting appearances on “Subterranean Initiation” and “Permanent Changes in Consciousness”), Xasthur, Leviathan, and even touches of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Junius with some classic American rock leanings, as well as Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, and even Dimmu Borgir at times.

The artwork for Celestial Lineage is amazing. Photographs, presumably taken near Calliope, depict a peaceful, beautiful rural setting, with Nathan and Aaron in the distance in a falling-down forest on the back cover. The sleeves for the records are equally photographed, featuring mountains, forest, and a deforested area as well. The vinyl itself for both records is some of the blackest I’ve ever seen, the sheen on it is magical, and at 180gm the platters have a good weight.
In all, it really meshes together, the physical beauty of the records and the auditory beauty that is on the records.

“Thuja Magus Imperium” is in many ways a classy black metal song. It starts off ambient-infused and has Jessika Kenney singing wonderful vocals, then Nathan takes over with his blackened lungs and riffs. A wonderful solo happens in it, which in the notes is called the “Black Acid Solo” (a perfect name for it), and it’s performed by Milky Burgess. The main riffs are reminiscent of slower Darkthrone, with a very haunting quality to it that brings Emperor’s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk to mind.
“Permanent Changes in Consciousness” is very much an ambient track, with wind and meditative chanting being the main sounds. There is a wonderful underlayer of percussion and windchime-esque sounds. Lovely, but far too short for such a great ambient gem.
“Subterranean Initiation” starts off fast and hard, keeping the wind sounds but turning them into a gale rather than a breeze. If the more cinematic elements of modern Dimmu Borgir were performed by Celtic Frost, this song might result. Very strong riff structure that moves you along, rather than allowing you to come with it, is combined with beautiful keys. All of this gets stripped away for a short time, however, and we are left with only a bare guitar momentarily, and the song slows right down for about a minute, only to return to it’s Celtic Borgir beginnings. Faith Coloccia does additional chants on this song, with Timb Harris writing and performing the “uprooting string arrangements”.
“Rainbow Illness” is another instrumental, led primarily by keys and possible field recordings. Really good, but again, too short.
“Woodland Cathedral” seems to be the baby of Jessika Kenney, with her taking control of choral vocal performance, arrangement, lyrics, and organ. The woman is amazing, her voice strong and uplifting, while her organ work really brings you down to earth. This is almost in no way a black metal song, other than the undertones of guitar, bass, and drums, which slowly come closer to the fore, which makes it even more of a black metal song, to me. This song really reminds me of parts of the Treasure album by Cocteau Twins.
“Astral Blood” starts off as a total second wave black metal song, with riffing and drumming sounding like a drier Darkthrone, until the keys kick in at least. Then it becomes all Wolves in the Throne Room. Thick vintage tone comes from their amps, and analog synths bubble up; no longer is this dry. Wet with emotion, “Astral Blood” may well be my favorite song on the album. I love the harp/wind section by Zeynep Okyu Yilmaz at the 4ish-minute mark. It’s just so moving, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. Honestly, this whole song is like that. It definitely pulls at the heartstrings.
“Prayer of Transformation” picks up on the ending of “Astral Blood”, then morphs into it’s own lumbering beast. The entire song moves at a slow pace, bringing a doomy flavor to the occult lyrics. The synths are just brilliant, and what I think is more field recordings make quiet undercurrents throughout. There is nothing extreme about this song, except Nathan’s vocals, but the whole is extremely moving. I could sleep to this, and perhaps have the most pleasant dreams of bringing the dead back to golden life. The ending is great, with the keys and guitars coming up into a crescendo, then dropping off into ambiance for about a minute.

This is where, as the final record begins to click the fact that it is over, you turn off your record player, take off the record, put it back into its sleeve, and put the first one on the turntable again, and take the spiritual and emotional journey once, or even twice more. I could listen to this album, and only this album, for days. It is spellbinding and gorgeous. Beautiful. Perfect.
10 out of 10.

Wolves in the Throne Room on Facebook.

Genre: Blackened Death Metal

Label: Vendlus Records

Arkhum is a band from Eugene, Oregon (yes, the one mentioned in that Sublime song… do you have any idea how many times I’ve been asked by out of staters about that shit?) that has been gaining notoriety at the same rate your mom’s throat gains scar tissue thanks to their chaotic live shows and ability to fervently release demo after demo after live video after single after EP after demo, etc… in five years!

I can say this with 100% certainty: the vocals WILL divide. They do this thing were they trick you into thinking that they’re decent brutal death metal growls, but as soon as you get comfortable they sink into what I’ve always hypothesized would happen if you gargled with raw sewage.

The guitars on the other hand are a mind blowing balancing act of Gigan-ish wankery, just right Wolves In The Throne Room inspired riffs and brain melting solos! Though, after a few tracks, it all does start to get a little old (it took me about five tracks before I wanted to listen to something else the first time through). The only thing that I can say is flawless is album closer Expendable Biomass. Take everything I complained about thus far and rotate it one hundred and eighty degrees! It’s five minutes and thirty three seconds of “YES! BANG YOUR FUCKING SKULL UNTIL SOME OF THAT SWEET GRAY SOUP OOZES OUT!”

On top of that, there is one other thing that nobody can object to and that’s the lyrics (look ‘em up because there is no fucking way you”l be able to understand them if you just jump right in). When you’re songs are about mechanical microorganisms, R’lyeh, or if you even mention the Ptolemaic System in passing, my inner sci-fi/sci-non-fi geek goes berserk! Arkhum has made a fan, right here.

Overall: Anno Universum may not be for everybody. Hell, it almost wasn’t ever for me! But, if you give it a chance and do in fact find something here that gets your blood flowing, it’s a satisfying ride through some cosmic what the fuck.

7/10

Arkhum On ReverbNation

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Genre: Black Metal
Label: Candlelight Records

Now, there’s already a review of Quietly, Undramatically up on this site, but as my first review I wanted to get off to a good start, and thought I’d go for a release I really loved. Curiously enough, it was through reading on this website that I was introduced to Woe, so I figured where better to start? Here goes…

Woe are one of those bands that absolutely everybody seems to love at the minute. and 22 seconds into Track 2 of Quietly, Undramatically (“The Road From Recovery”), I can see why, this shit’s killer. It’s like a well produced Vordr or to make an even better comparison, it’s pure Under The Sign era Bathory, in terms of the actual music, it’s definitely Black Metal, but also very thrashy (read: VERY thrashy) and very Hardcore at the same time. It conforms much to the typical song structures of Black Metal, little in the way of verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus, but also the band wears its influences on its sleeve, the little breakdown in “The Road from Recovery” could have been on a Black Flag album 30 years ago but of course, everyone knows it is the spirit and atmosphere of a Black Metal record that makes or breaks it, rather than strictly the musicianship. In terms of Musicianship, if you want to hear basically the same album as Quietly, Undramatically but much less polished, go listen to Fuck Off And Die’s Anti All (2008, ). The difference between Woe and other such Punky/Thrashy BM outfits is definitely the atmosphere. Close your eyes when listening to this album and you could be standing in the room with the band when they recorded it, you can feel the energy literally flowing from your speakers, the whole thing has the air of a train that could derail at any second, whether it’s at a fast segment, a mid-paced atmospheric riff or even the slow, hardcore punk-ish breakdowns, it gives the impression it could explode into literally just frantic noise at any moment, but doesn’t, it keeps you on that razor’s edge of “oh shit what’s coming next” and “wow, they went there?!” without fucking up once, and it’s very rare that an album manages to pull this off on any tracks, let alone all of them.

The absolute stand-out moment of this album is the melodic/atmospheric clean section from 4:20 onwards in the track “Quietly, Undramatically”. Within seconds of this segment starting you can see why they named the album after this track, it’s probably the most ingenious bit of Black Metal I’ve heard in a long time. It is literally a case of Woe has taken musical ideas very often applied to progressive Hardcore Punk, think Dead Swans, Throats or La Dispute, multiplied by the atmospheric polyrhythm of progressive metal such as Fellsilent, and applied them to Black Metal, in a way I believe is completely unheard of. The clean vocals are a complete surprise, and the guitar that flows in and around them is beautiful and melancholy at the same time, the drums syncopated yet pounding, it’s literally hypnotic, and the only track I can name that it sounds anything like is “Oblique” by Fellsilent, which is the same idea but applied to a genre other than Black Metal. And then it kicks into pure raw black metal fury. Fucking beast.

Now, let’s talk about production. If there’s a bassist in this band, then I don’t think anyone would notice if he quit. I can hear 2 audible guitars, a vocalist and a drummer. Whoever produced this certainly knows what they were doing, the drums have a thick, earthy sound that’s more like modern Hardcore or Death Metal, yet the way they are mixed, they ebb and flow around and underneath the guitars, never masking them or diverting from them, they support them rather than play over them. The guitars are also mixed very well, unless each guitar is playing the same thing its always clear which one is doing something, and the vocals, while a little loud at first, by the end of the album whoever was mixing has them perfectly in the mix. It’s also very rare to have catchy hooks in BM. Half an hour after turning off this record I still have the floating, flowing and mesmeric riff from “A Treatise On Control” stuck in my head. Beasty. All in all, this album easily lives up to the hype that it has gained, and If they put out another like this then Woe ought to cement their place as leaders of the new USBM scene, I can only imagine people trying to sound just like this but not quite pulling it off for the next 10 years (Just like when Xasthur appeared and then every USBM band copied them for a little while, I think Woe will be the next band everyone rips off).

I would give this a 10 out of 10, but there’s no such thing as a perfect record, one man’s amazing is another man’s utter shite. And for the reasons why I would give this a 10, im sure many kvlt purists would score this a 0. Well, fuck them. This peculiar blend of modern Hardcore Punk, Thrash and atmospheric BM is fucking amazing. Buy it now, if you can.

Next week begins WITTR’s next rigorous stretch of tour touring which takes them through more than fifteen countries by the beginning of June.

The festivities kick off with the band’s week-and-a-half long West Coast US tour alongside Earth and Lori Goldston. Following that, for all of May and into June the band will be forging their way through much of Europe on a headlining tour.

WITTR with Earth, Lori Goldston:
4/14/2010 The Oak Street Speakeasy – Eugene, OR
4/15/2010 Noctrum – Eureka, CA
4/16/2010 Slim’s – San Francisco, CA
4/17/2010 Brookdale Lodge – Santa Cruz, CA
4/19/2010 Ché Café – San Diego, CA
4/20/2010 The EchoPlex – Los Angeles, CA
4/22/2010 Rotture – Portland, OR
4/23/2010 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
4/24/2010 Capitol Theatre – Olympia, WA w/ Mount Eerie, Ô Paon‏

WITTR Headlining European Tour:
5/01/2010 Ragnarok Festival – Rieden, Germany
5/05/2010 K4 – Nurnberg, Germany
5/06/2010 Matrix Club – Prague, Czech Republic
5/07/2010 Friction Festival – Berlin, Germany
5/08/2010 Beatpol – Dresden, Germany
5/10/2010 Durer Kert – Budapest, Hungary
5/11/2010 Channel Zero – Ljubljana, Slovenia
5/12/2010 Szene – Vienna, Austria
5/13/2010 Neudegg Alm – Abtenau, Austria
5/14/2010 Rock Planet – Pinarella di Cervia, Italy
5/15/2010 Koko Club – Castelletto Cervo, Italy
5/16/2010 Le Kab – Geneva, Switzerland
5/17/2010 Jubez – Karlsruhe, France
5/18/2010 Glazart – Paris, France
5/19/2010 AB Club – Brussels, Belgium
5/20/2010 The Fighting Cocks – Kingston, England
5/21/2010 Engine Rooms – Brighton, England
5/22/2010 Hare And Hounds – Birmingham, England
5/23/2010 Islington Mill – Manchester, England
5/24/2010 The Underworld – London, England
5/25/2010 The Croft – Bristol, England
5/27/2010 Trix – Antwerp, Belgium
5/28/2010 Lakei – Helmond, Netherlands
5/29/2010 Tivoli – Utrecht, Netherlands
5/30/2010 Gleis22 – Munster, Germany
5/31/2010 Hafenklang – Hamburg, Germany
6/01/2010 Loppen – Copenhagen, Denmark
6/02/2010 Sticky Fingers – Goteborg, Sweden
6/03/2010 Garage – Oslo, Norway

Stay tuned for more details on WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM throughout the year.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM are preparing to embark on their Cascadian Tour 2010, the previously announced four-date all-ages live run within their Pacific Northwest homelands. Since the tour’s initial announcement, the show in Portland, Oregon has been moved to a new venue, now taking place at Rotture.

Immediately following this set of shows, the band embark on their first ever Australian tour for a week and a half of shows hitting many major areas across the continent alongside France’s avant-doom destroyers Monarch.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Cascadian Tour:
2/10/2010 Rotture – Portland, OR w/ Atriarch, Megaton Leviathan, Chasma [*NEW VENUE]
2/11/2010 The Black Lodge – Seattle, WA w/ Atriarch, Megaton Leviathan
2/12/2010 Jinx Art Space – Bellingham, WA w/ Megaton Leviathan, Leatherhorn
2/13/2010 Hall of the Woods – Olympia, WA w/ Mount Eerie, Ô Paon

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Australian Tour w/ Monarch:
2/18/2010 Fowlers Live – Adelaide, South Australia
2/19/2010 Brisbane Hotel – Hobart, Tasmania
2/20/2010 Gaelic Theatre – Sydney, New South Wales
2/21/2010 Arthouse Hotel – Melbourne, Victoria
2/23/2010 ANU Bar – Canberra, Australian Capital Territory
2/24/2010 Great Northern Hotel – Byron Bay, New South Wales
2/25/2010 Hi Fi Bar – Brisbane, Queensland
2/26/2010 Bald Face Stag – Sydney, New South Wales
2/27/2010 Hi Fi Bar – Melbourne, Victoria
2/28/2010 National Hotel – Geelong, Victoria